permaculture

["Loren Davidson" <listmail@lorendavidson.com>]

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Lisa MacIver <lisamaciver8@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date:  Tue, 20 Apr 2004 10:27:50 -0700 (PDT)

>As an engineer, and the daughter and wife of engineers, I don't find
>permaculture very like engineering.  However, at one time I was 
>involved with object-oriented software design, and that has parallels.

[nods] A former partner of mine, who is a computer programmer, pointed out 
that design elements such as chickens very strongly resemble objects in a 
programming environment - they have inputs, outputs, and characteristics, and 
they can be defined in part by what they do with inputs in order to produce 
outputs.

Actually, it's probably more accurate to say that object-oriented programming 
very strongly resembles descriptions of real-world stuff by design. But it's 
an analogy that does work, IMO.

>Not to change the subject, but this does I think bring up what I can't
>find, which is data, such as particular guilds that work well, and 
>better records of the input and outputs of (for example) sheep, and 
>(another example) on keeping poultry in orchards, what kind/stocking 
>rate/tree variety/s/tree protection works (ducks in the orchard were 
>not a sucess for me, though philosophically it sounded great).  Are 
>there resources with this type of information?  

Well, there are two answers to this sort of question.

First of all, Permaculture principles would indicate that the best way to 
develop this data is by careful and protracted observation, i.e. try some 
stuff out and see how it works. I think there's a lot to be gained by getting 
good at this, but it takes a lot longer to get something working that way at 
times. You've learned one way to not do ducks in an orchard, for example, and 
you might want to explore *why* it didn't work for you and how it might be 
made to work.

At the same time, there *is* information in a number of places about some 
possible guild associations, information on raising animals, etc. One good 
resource is Toby Hemenway's book, "Gaia's Garden." He provides a fairly good 
description of a couple of guilds that he's worked out, along with the 
methodology by which he did so.

I've also used books that are essentially encyclopedias of plants native to a 
given area - I don't have titles handy, but there are some good ones for 
California, which has some climate zones in common with Ashland. And there 
are resources online for plant lists for specific plant communities, such as 
blue oak woodland, etc. Try a Google search.

Build soil,

Loren



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